


The Sky Is Nothing Like You Thought

by onemorethingishouldntdo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU?, Fairy Tales, Gen, Second person POV, brother sister drama, david foster wallace stealing, just kidding I just don't know this fandom that well but posted it anyway, poetry-ish, rapunzel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5488205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onemorethingishouldntdo/pseuds/onemorethingishouldntdo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sky is nothing like you thought. </p><p>You’re not sure it’s better. The blues are so bright they sting your retinas, the reds look like blood, and the green reminds you of your own vomit. Those are the realities you have to scaffold new knowledge onto. Then you see the butterfly. It's as big as your hand and fluttering gently on the log. It lets you get close enough to brush against its velvety wings, and when you do you notice tiny flowers are spread at its feet like a carpet. They don't smell anything like vomit at all. </p><p>In a world where there was once nothing, suddenly there is everything. And Bellamy makes it clear that it is all very, very dangerous. </p><p>But you make fucking sure that you are the first person off that ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sky Is Nothing Like You Thought

Empty steel walls are a good place for stories.

When you’re five and your brother is braiding your hair, he can turn the cramped compartment into a castle with only the fragment of a sentence. /Once upon a time../

Your favorite story is the one about the beautiful princess whose hair grew and grew and grew, but you like all of them even though  sometimes they’re hard to understand when words like grass or sky don’t have real meanings. You have to make them up. But you’re good at that.    
  
You don’t even have to close your eyes to see that the sky is just an endless metal plate, curved instead of straight, and so far away you can’t touch it. For the grass you wrap your hand around your braid and pretend it’s green, wet, and not so bristly. You wish you could put your split-ends between your toes. But Bellamy never lets your hair get that long.

“You’re not Rapunzel, Octavia. You’re the sister of a general.”

“But you’re my Prince.” And you smile and make those eyes at him and he groans and starts again. From the beginning.

**

The sky is nothing like you thought.

You’re not sure it’s better. The blues are so bright the sting your retinas, the reds look like blood, and the greens remind you of your own vomit. Those are the realities you have to scaffold new knowledge onto. Then you see the butterfly.  
  
 It’s as big as your hand, and fluttering gently on the log, but doesn’t fly away when you get close enough to brush against it’s velvety wings and see all the tiny flowers spread at it’s feet like a carpet. They don’t smell anything like vomit at all.

Suddenly, in a world where there was once nothing, there is everything. And Bellamy makes clear that it is all very, very dangerous.

But you make fucking sure that you are the first person off that ship.

**

You are reckless. You are stupid. You will not survive. Not without me. This is the subtext in every one of Bellamy’s own reckless, stupid, selfish decisions.

He is not all wrong.

When you jump in the river you’re not sure if it’s because you want to taste real water or because you want to prove him right. There’s no other way to tell him that sometimes you miss the box, the stories. Most of all you miss getting to decide what the sky is, instead of the other way around.

Then of course Consequences come in the form of a current, a dark, long shadow with  razor teeth.  You’re going to die, and you’re secretly glad, because that is what Heroes do, until someone else arms (always someone else’s) are wrapping around you, pulling you out of the water.

Jasper.

Before you have time to really thank him, he has a spear in his gut and is gone, and Bellamy is screaming at you, “You never think. You’ve never had to deal the real world before. You have to listen. I’m trying to protect you!”

You stay silent, cheeks puffing out, skin glowing with a fury as red and hot at the coals at the bottom of the campfire of the early morning watch no one gives you, but you always take. Your rage you let show, but you don’t unsheath the words growing in your mouth like new, sharp teeth.

“You don’t have to tell me how the world is. I can see it. I can feel it. Let me feel it. Let me bleed.”

This is when you finally realize that just because he loves you doesn’t mean he’s the prince.

The witch loved Rapunzel too.

**

When Bellamy cleans your wound and smooths your hair and makes the fire in your blood cool to the warm glow of a grateful smile, you realize something else:

It wasn’t just the witch who loved Rapunzel. It works the other way around.  
  
When you tell Jasper this, he gives one of his lopsided grins, scoots closer on the log (but never close enough) and says, “It’s ironic, isn’t it.” and then he repeats a line he heard on one of the old vids in the internet library: 

_Irony is the song of a bird who’s learned to love its cage._

You don’t quite know what irony is, and you don’t ask, because you are so fucking tired of asking other people to tell you how the world is. You get the feeling Jasper never asked anyone either. 

Instead you decide that irony must be a kind of story.

Or maybe a kind of love.


End file.
